Hi Everybody,
Well Xmas has simply flown by, and I'm sitting here with bright spring-like sunshine streaming through my windows. On the run in Richmond Park with Gatsby this morning it was too hot for a jacket!! And I had an immensely encouraging email from someone who said they'd received a copy of TCFB for xmas and they were already half way through it...with great pleasure! So that's worth an exclamation mark isn't it? perhaps 2!! Anyway, we're galloping through this chapter on Approaching the Practice, and we've looked at the three pillars of chanting and study and taking action. and we've talked about Buddhism not presenting us with a set of prescribed behaviours, or a morality, and we're diving into the meaning of the central Nichiren mantra, nam myoho renge kyo. That's where we pick up the narrative thread.
' I don't think we should be surprised or taken aback if we find some of these issues elusive and difficult to grasp when we first encounter this practice, and indeed, throughout our practice. Why shouldn't it be difficult? It's a huge and many-layered explanation of the reality of life. And as we have said so often, Buddhism is daily life, and since life is infinitely complex, Buddhism will inevitably reflect that complexity.
In my own case I have to say , I certainly did find it difficult. It was one thing comin gto understand many of the values that Buddhism embraces, and appreciating just how valuable they could be close to, in terms of human relationships, and further afiled perhaps, in terms of how society functions. It was quite another to commit to the chanting a strange mantra, perhpas an hour or more a day. Did I really want to do that? A mantra moreover that carries with it a whole bundle of meanings and associations and implications that are to a large extent closed off from everyday experience and derived from a quite different cultural tradition. That was quite a struggle.
I started chanting for two principal reasonds, and I'm sure my experience is by no means uncommon. The people I met who were practicing were to be admired in many ways; positive, compassionate, socially responsible, always constructive in their aims and endeavours. Always supportive of others. But it seemed to me that there was only one way of coming to understand the true value of Nichiren Buddhism in my daily life, and that was to allow it into my life.
I have been chanting on a daily basis ever since!
That's it for today.
I'll be back on the turn of the year on Saturday.
I wish everybody a really creative and fulfilling year of life to come.
William
PS TCFB is available on Amazon in paperback and as a download on Kindle.
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